Steampunk
Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retro-futuristic technology and aesthetics prominently inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery and design. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American frontier where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power.
Steampunk features anachronistic technologies or retro-futuristic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them – distinguishing it from Neo-Victorianism – and is likewise rooted in the era's perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art. Such technologies may include fictional machines like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Other examples of steampunk contain alternative history-style presentations of such technology as steam cannons, lighter-than-air airships, analog computers or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.
Steampunk may also incorporate additional elements from the genres of fantasy, horror, historical fiction, alternate history or other branches of speculative fiction, making it often a hybrid genre. As a form of speculative fiction, it explores alternative futures or pasts but can also address real-world social issues. The first known appearance of the term steampunk was in 1987, though it now retroactively refers to many works of fiction created as far back as the 1950s or earlier. A popular subgenre is Japanese steampunk, consisting of steampunk-themed manga and anime.
Steampunk also refers to any of the artistic styles, clothing fashions, or subcultures that have developed from the aesthetics of steampunk fiction, Victorian-era fiction, art nouveau design, and films from the mid-20th century. Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical 'steampunk' style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.
History
Precursors
Steampunk is influenced by and often adopts the style of the 19th-century scientific romances of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Mary Shelley, and Edward S. Ellis's The Steam Man of the Prairies. Several more modern works of art and fiction significant to the development of the genre were produced before the genre had a name. Titus Alone, by Mervyn Peake, is widely regarded by scholars as the first novel in the genre proper, while others point to Michael Moorcock's 1971 novel The Warlord of the Air, which was heavily influenced by Peake's work. The film Brazil was an early cinematic influence, although it can also be considered a precursor to the steampunk offshoot dieselpunk. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright was an early comic version of the Moorcock-style mover between timestreams.In fine art, Remedios Varo's paintings combine elements of Victorian dress, fantasy, and technofantasy imagery. In television, one of the earliest manifestations of the steampunk ethos in the mainstream media was the CBS television series The Wild Wild West, which inspired the later film.
Origin of the term
Although many works now considered seminal to the genre were published in the 1960s and 1970s, the term "steampunk" originated largely in the 1980s as a tongue-in-cheek variant of "cyberpunk". It was coined by science fiction author K. W. Jeter, who was trying to find a general term for works by Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and himself — all of which took place in a 19th-century setting and imitated conventions of such actual Victorian speculative fiction as H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. In a letter to science fiction magazine Locus, printed in the April 1987 issue, Jeter wrote:Modern steampunk
While Jeter's Morlock Night and Infernal Devices, Powers' The Anubis Gates, and Blaylock's Lord Kelvin's Machine were the first novels to which Jeter's neologism would be applied, the three authors gave the term little thought at the time. They were far from the first modern science fiction writers to speculate on the development of steam-based technology or alternative histories. Keith Laumer's Worlds of the Imperium and Ronald W. Clark's Queen Victoria's Bomb apply modern speculation to past-age technology and society. Michael Moorcock's Warlord of the Air is another early example. Harry Harrison's novel A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! portrays Britain in an alternative 1973, full of atomic locomotives, coal-powered flying boats, ornate submarines, and Victorian dialogue. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright was one of the first steampunk comics. In February 1980, Richard A. Lupoff and Steve Stiles published the first "chapter" of their 10-part comic strip The Adventures of Professor Thintwhistle and His Incredible Aether Flyer. In 2004, one anonymous author described steampunk as "Colonizing the Past so we can dream the future."The first use of the word "steampunk" in a title was in Paul Di Filippo's 1995 Steampunk Trilogy, consisting of three short novels: "Victoria", "Hottentots", and "Walt and Emily", which, respectively, imagine the replacement of Queen Victoria by a human/newt clone; an invasion of Massachusetts by Lovecraftian monsters, drawing its title from the historic racial taxonomy "hottentot"; and a love affair between Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.
Japanese steampunk
Japanese steampunk consists of steampunk manga comics and anime productions from Japan. Steampunk elements have consistently appeared in mainstream manga since the 1940s, dating back to Osamu Tezuka's epic science-fiction trilogy consisting of Lost World, Metropolis and Nextworld. The steampunk elements found in manga eventually made their way into mainstream anime productions starting in the 1970s. Influenced by 19th-century European authors such as Jules Verne, steampunk anime and manga arose from a Japanese fascination with an imaginary fantastical version of old Industrial Europe, linked to a phenomenon called akogare no Pari, comparable to the West's fascination with an "exotic" East.The most influential steampunk animator was Hayao Miyazaki, who was creating steampunk anime since the 1970s, starting with the television show Future Boy Conan. His manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and its 1984 anime film adaptation also contained steampunk elements. Miyazaki's most influential steampunk production was the Studio Ghibli anime film Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which became a major milestone in the genre and has been described by The Steampunk Bible as "one of the first modern steampunk classics." Archetypal steampunk elements in Laputa include airships, air pirates, steam-powered robots, and a view of steam power as a limitless but potentially dangerous source of power.
The success of Laputa inspired Hideaki Anno and Studio Gainax to create their first hit production, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, a steampunk anime show which loosely adapts elements from Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, with Captain Nemo making an appearance. Based on a concept by Miyazaki, Nadia was influential on later steampunk anime such as Katsuhiro Otomo's anime film Steamboy. Disney's animated steampunk film Atlantis: The Lost Empire was influenced by anime, particularly Miyazaki's works and possibly Nadia. Other popular Japanese steampunk works include Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli anime film Howl's Moving Castle, Sega's video game and anime franchise Sakura Wars which is set in a steampunk version of Meiji/Taishō era Japan, and Square Enix's manga and anime franchise Fullmetal Alchemist.
Relationships to retrofuturism, DIY craft and making
Steampunk used to be confused with retrofuturism. Indeed, both sensibilities recall "the older but still modern eras in which technological change seemed to anticipate a better world, one remembered as relatively innocent of industrial decline." For some scholars, retrofuturism is considered a strand of steampunk, one that looks at alternatives to historical imagination and usually created with the same kinds of social protagonists and written for the same type of audiences.One of steampunk's most significant contributions is the way in which it mixes digital media with traditional handmade art forms. As scholars Rachel Bowser and Brian Croxall put it, "the tinkering and tinker-able technologies within steampunk invite us to roll up our sleeves and get to work re-shaping our contemporary world." In this respect, steampunk bears much in common with DIY craft and bricolage artmaking.
Art, entertainment, and media
Art and design
Many of the visualisations of steampunk have their origins with, among others, Walt Disney's film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, including the design of the story's submarine the Nautilus, its interiors, and the crew's underwater gear.Aspects of steampunk design emphasise a balance between form and function. In this, it is like the Arts and Crafts Movement. But John Ruskin, William Morris, and the other reformers in the late nineteenth century rejected machines and industrial production. In contrast, steampunk enthusiasts present a "non-luddite critique of technology". In Dutch amusement park De Efteling, there is a dive coaster themed to a steampunk Victorian haunted goldmine called Baron 1898.
Various modern utilitarian objects have been modified by enthusiasts into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style. Examples include computer keyboards and electric guitars. The goal of such redesigns is to employ appropriate materials with design elements and craftsmanship consistent with the Victorian era, rejecting the aesthetic of industrial design.
In 1994, the Paris Metro station at Arts et Métiers was redesigned by Belgian artist Francois Schuiten in steampunk style, to honor the works of Jules Verne. The station is reminiscent of a submarine, sheathed in brass with giant cogs in the ceiling and portholes that look out onto fanciful scenes.
The artist group Kinetic Steam Works brought a working steam engine to the Burning Man festival in 2006 and 2007. The group's founding member, Sean Orlando, created a Steampunk Tree House that has been displayed at a number of festivals. The Steampunk Tree House is now permanently installed at the Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, Delaware.
The Neverwas Haul is a three-story, self-propelled mobile art vehicle built to resemble a Victorian house on wheels. Designed by Shannon O'Hare, it was built by volunteers in 2006 and presented at the Burning Man festival from 2006 through 2015. When fully built, the Haul propelled itself at a top speed of 5 miles per hour and required a crew of ten people to operate safely. Currently, the Neverwas Haul makes her home at Obtainium Works, an "art car factory" in Vallejo, CA owned by O'Hare and home to several other self-styled "contraptionists".
In May–June 2008, multimedia artist and sculptor Paul St George exhibited outdoor interactive video installations linking London and Brooklyn, New York, in a Victorian era-styled telectroscope. Utilizing this device, New York promoter Evelyn Kriete organised a transatlantic wave between steampunk enthusiasts from both cities, prior to White Mischief's Around the World in 80 Days steampunk-themed event.
In 2009, for Questacon, artist Tim Wetherell created a large wall piece that represented the concept of the clockwork universe. This steel artwork contains moving gears, a working clock, and a movie of the moon's terminator in action. The 3D moon movie was created by Antony Williams.
Steampunk became a common descriptor for homemade objects sold on the craft network Etsy between 2009 and 2011, though many of the objects and fashions bear little resemblance to earlier established descriptions of steampunk. Thus the craft network may not strike observers as "sufficiently steampunk" to warrant its use of the term. Comedian April Winchell, author of the book Regretsy: Where DIY Meets WTF, cataloged some of the most egregious and humorous examples on her website "Regretsy". The blog was popular among steampunks and even inspired a music video that went viral in the community and was acclaimed by steampunk "notables".
From October 2009 through February 2010, the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, hosted the first major exhibition of steampunk art objects, curated and developed by New York artist and designer Art Donovan, who also exhibited his own "electro-futuristic" lighting sculptures, and presented by Dr. Jim Bennett, museum director. From redesigned practical items to fantastical contraptions, this exhibition showcased the work of eighteen steampunk artists from around the globe. The exhibit proved to be the most successful and highly attended in the museum's history and attracted more than eighty thousand visitors. The event was detailed in the official artist's journal The Art of Steampunk, by curator Donovan.
In November 2010, The Libratory Steampunk Art Gallery was opened by Damien McNamara in Oamaru, New Zealand. Created from papier-mâché to resemble a large cave and filled with industrial equipment from yesteryear, rayguns, and general steampunk quirks, its purpose is to provide a place for steampunkers in the region to display artwork for sale all year long. A year later, a more permanent gallery, Steampunk HQ, was opened in the former Meeks Grain Elevator Building across the road from The Woolstore, and has since become a notable tourist attraction for Oamaru.